Book Recommendation: The Gene: An Intimate History

This is the second time I am recommending a book by Siddhartha Mukherjee; the last time I recommended *The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer*, and this time I recommend another of his books, *The Gene: An Intimate History*.

Siddhartha Mukherjee is an oncologist. In *The Gene*, with fluent prose and compelling storytelling, he explains some of the dry knowledge of genetics in a wonderfully lively and accessible way. *The Gene* is highly readable; the author's "profound-made-accessible" writing style allows ordinary people to understand abstruse genetic knowledge. I read this book to the point of forgetting my meals and sleep, often reading it while eating—the taste of the book was far better than the taste of the food.

Through understanding genes, we can learn how life comes to be, how species evolve, how biodiversity arises, and also how hereditary diseases come about. We can also learn about some cutting-edge knowledge of how gene technology is applied to modern medicine; more and more diseases can now be treated with gene technology. For some cancers in which it is clear which gene has mutated—such as in some patients with breast cancer or lung cancer—gene technology can now be used as the first-line treatment, choosing targeted drug therapy, which yields better outcomes than other methods.

By learning about the birth and development of genetics, I developed a deep respect for those brilliant scientists—Darwin, Mendel, Bateson, Galton, and others. Their keen insight, indomitable character, persistent pursuit of truth, and patience in endless experimentation are all deeply admirable; they opened a new epoch in human cognition.

Popular-science works like *The Gene* are suitable for the great majority of people to read. Unfortunately, though, there are still not many readers in China who enjoy reading popular-science works. A stone from another hill can polish the jade; learning modern scientific common sense also helps those of us who study Chinese medicine to view TCM more rationally and to unearth truly valuable treasures from the classics of Chinese medicine.

There are no shortcuts in scientific exploration, and the stories of scientists are also inspiring.

Mendel spent seven years on his pea hybridization experiments, experiencing countless failures. Patiently, Mendel grew hybrid peas on the grounds of the monastery, doing meticulous work; through various schemes of first-generation and second-generation crosses, he observed the changes that occurred in the peas during hybridization, manually recorded hundreds of thousands of data points, and ultimately discovered some of the basic laws of genetics, unlocking the secret of genes and opening up a new realm for human understanding of the world.

But during his lifetime, Mendel could not gain recognition from his contemporaries. The brilliant Mendel once thought of becoming a teacher, but when he sat the teaching-certification examination, he failed because the chief examiner felt he lacked basic scientific literacy. After Mendel's paper was written, few people paid attention to it; when he sought advice from the most renowned scholar of the time, that scholar, unable to understand Mendel's paper, ruthlessly mocked this amateur scientist, thinking he was simply talking nonsense.

Only thirty years after his death did people recognize the enormous contribution this great scientist had made to human society. Gene theory has since completely transformed human society.

Bateson, at the very time gene theory was just being accepted by scientists, had already foreseen the earth-shaking changes it would bring to human society—changes both good and bad, all of which Bateson keenly perceived. Like a prophet, he saw decades in advance many of today's problems concerning genes.

These brilliant insights compel admiration. Today, the pea hybridization experiment seems a simple experiment, but before the secret of the gene had been uncovered, Mendel and Bateson and their kind could discover problems through careful observation of nature; that is truly remarkable.

Darwin and Mendel—one a clergyman, the other a monk—were both full-time clerics, yet they were not influenced by theology and carried out scientific research that overturned theology. This spirit of seeking truth, neither bowing to gods nor to authority, is worth our learning.